


Toil and Trouble

by grumby



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Reaper Squad, This is a spookfic yall, happy halloween!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27303781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumby/pseuds/grumby
Summary: Something about Halloween just really gets necromancers horny.That’s what the Raven Queen told Barry and Lup when she called them in for an emergency meeting, anyway. “My reapers, ‘tis All Hallow’s Eve, and the witching hour fast approaches. And those fuck-damn necromancers just won’t quit it. Do your sacred duty and fuck them up a bit,” had been her exact words.Standard caseload for the reaper squad was a couple of bog-standard zombies a month. Lup and Barry were privately more upset at the standard of necromancy practiced in Faerun than the actual profaning of the laws of life and death. Normally, they’d arrive, shout at some college kids trying to summon a succubus, and then head back to the office to draw clown makeup in marker on all Kravitz’s paintings while he filled out the paperwork.On Halloween, though, all bets were off.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 109





	Toil and Trouble

We see a cave, dark, lit only by the candles placed carefully in each corner of a pentagram. We see a dozen cloaked figures, in grey and black, chanting in an eldritch language incomprehensible to human ears, their hands linked. In the centre of the pentagram, a body lies, hogtied and gagged. 

The chanting reaches a crescendo. The candles flicker in sync as one figure steps forward, a knife raised, and - 

An ominous _creeeaaaaaakkkkk_ rings out. All the figures look at each other. The leader lowers the dagger. 

“Did someone forget to oil the hinges of the Utterly Terrifying Front Door again?” He asks. 

A whistling, as of a harsh wind, echoes through the cave. 

“Did someone leave the Horrifying Eldritch Windows open?” The chief demands. 

“Uh, grandmaster, is this meant to happen?” One figure says, but the leader shakes his head. 

An eerie drum beat picks up, and the cloaked figures break the circle, now clearly agitated. 

_I was working in the lab, late one night -_

Dulcet tones ring out, and the lead figure pulls back his hood to reveal a greasy, middle-aged human man. “What.” He deadpans. 

_\- when my eyes beheld an eerie sight -_

We see a fist-sized rift appear, floating three feet in the air above the cultists’ pentagram. Through the portal is pitch-black, but studded with glimmers of light, like stars in the night sky. It grows, rapidly, until it’s six feet in diameter, pulsating threateningly. 

_\- for my monster from his slab, began to rise -_

A new figure steps through the portal. She’s got a wizard’s hat on her head and a dozen bracelets on one wrist, a silver metal bracer on the other. She’s wearing a skirt, utterly impractical for fighting in, and a crop top, offering absolutely no defence against physical attacks. 

_\- and suddenly, to my surprise -_

“Boo,” she says, and the flesh melts from her skull as a scythe appears in her hand. 

_\- he did the mash! He did the monster mash!_

The figures scatter. The song continues as Lup, for, of course, that is our hero, slashes with her scythe, throws fireballs and generally decimates the unprepared cultists. 

A second portal appears with far less panache, and Kravitz steps through, surveying the carnage. “Why is it that you abuse your theme-song-picking privileges every time?” He says, in his godforsaken cockney accent. 

The lead cultist takes a swipe with the sacrificial dagger, and Lup dodges. It nicks her crop top, and she scowls, but another swing of the scythe dispatches her assailant. “We can’t enter to Fantasy Beethoven every time, bone boy. And it’s Halloween.” 

“Not even relevant,” Kravitz mutters, scuffing the pentagram’s chalk with a foot. “Could at least wait until someone’s raising a monster or something. These guys just wanted to perform a human sacrifice.” 

Lup leans down, cultists annihilated, and pulls the gag from the figure’s mouth. “Oh, ‘ _just’_ a human sacrifice, huh, Krav? Glad I mean so much to you,” Barry says, as soon as his airways are clear. “Just a human sacrifice, he says. Like I mean nothing.” 

“Put the gag back in, Lup,” Kravitz deadpans, without even looking up. 

Barry mutters to himself like Muttley as his wife unties him. He stands and dramatically brushes himself off. Lup and Kravitz ignore him. 

“Taako’s gonna be mad you ripped his crop top,” Kravitz continues. “He’s already not happy you dressed as him for Halloween.” Lup scowls. 

“ _His_ crop top _?_ He stole this from me.” 

“He says that owning it for ten years makes it his.” 

“I say buying it makes it mine. Barry, back me up, babe.” 

“Did you buy it?” Barry asks, without turning away from the bookshelf he’s inspecting. “I think you shoplifted that one, actually.” 

Lup turns her scowl on Barry. Kravitz chuckles, and she rounds on him again with a glare that could strike a man dead from a hundred meters. Thankfully, Kravitz is already dead, so he’s only nourished by Lup’s rage. 

“At least it wasn’t the hat,” she says. “He’d be real mad if it was the hat.” 

Barry pulls a book from the shelf. _Click._

“Uh oh,” he says, quietly, just as a crossbow concealed within the bookcase fires a bolt with a _twang_. It narrowly whistles past his ear, sailing over his shoulder and, almost in slow motion, hitting Lup squarely in her borrowed hat. It burrows a hole right through the middle and clatters off the far wall, the poison it was coated in sizzling at the frayed edges of Taako’s precious hat. 

Both Kravitz and Lup turn, slowly, to stare at him, mouths agape. “My bad?” He offers. 

Kravitz is the first to break down laughing. He bends almost double with his hands on his knees, wheezing so hard he’s thankful he doesn’t have to breathe. Lup maintains her shocked anger for a second before she cracks too. Barry just chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck ruefully. 

“Taako’s gonna be so fucking mad,” Kravitz manages to splutter. 

“We could – listen, we could tell him it was the cultists. We don’t need to tell him it was my fault –” 

“No, Bear, we definitely do,” Lup wheezes. 

“I fuckin’ hate Halloween,” Barry mumbles to himself. 

“I love Halloween,” Lup says, wiping her streaming eyes. 

Something about Halloween just really gets necromancers horny. 

That’s what the Raven Queen told Barry and Lup when she called them in for an emergency meeting, anyway. **_“My reapers, ‘tis All Hallow’s Eve, and the witching hour fast approaches. And those fuck-damn necromancers just won’t quit it. Do your sacred duty and fuck them up a bit,”_** had been her exact words. 

Standard caseload for the reaper squad was a couple of bog-standard zombies a month. Lup and Barry were privately more upset at the standard of necromancy practised in Faerun than the actual profaning of the laws of life and death. Normally, they’d arrive, shout at some college kids trying to summon a succubus, and then head back to the office to draw clown makeup in marker on all Kravitz’s paintings while he filled out the paperwork. 

On Halloween, though, all bets were off. 

The abandoned church stands dark on top of the hill. The fog curls thick around the reapers as they approach, the moonlight dappled by light cloud cover. 

“So, what’s the crime, here?” Lup asks. “Jaywalking? Speeding? Fantasy piracy? I’ll accept the movie kind or the yo-ho-ho boat kind.” 

“Raising an army of the undead,” Kravitz says, disapprovingly. “As you well know.” 

“Kravitz!” Barry calls, urgently, from a few paces away. Both his partners turn to him, and he points to the ground, where a discarded can of fantasy coke lies. “Better add littering to the charges. That sick fuck.” 

Kravitz shakes his head. “You know, sometimes I regret granting you a pardon.” 

“Cheer up, skeletor,” Lup says. “We’re in a spooky graveyard. Bet this looks like somewhere you’d take my brother on a date.” 

“Lup, I – that – that was one time!” Kravitz stops dead, and Lup walks into the back of him, only for Barry to walk straight into her back in turn. Once they’ve all extricated themselves, Kravitz turns to Lup accusingly, trying to maintain his air of authority after the embarrassing pile-up. “And don’t act like I haven’t caught you making out with Barry in the office before now -” 

Barry grins as the bickering between the two escalates, until movement catches his eye. “Uh, guys?” 

“That’s different! Workplace romance is one thing, a _graveyard date_ is another thing entirely -” 

“Oh, _workplace romance?_ Is that what you call skinny dipping in the sea of souls?” 

“Guys?” Barry says, slightly more insistent. “Hey, guys?” 

“Yes!” Lup exclaims, jabbing an accusing finger at him. “That is what I call it. Not my fault you’re a prude -” 

“Guys!” Barry shouts. 

Both the other reapers turn to him. “What?” They yell, in unison. 

“I think we found our undead horde.” 

Deep in conversation, the trio had unwittingly wandered into the church’s graveyard. Surrounding them are hundreds of gravestones of different shapes and sizes, all of which have something in common – a zombie clawing its way out of the base. 

“No, no, please continue,” an elven woman in a black robe says, perched upon a tomb. “We can come back, if it right now is inconvenient?” 

“Actually, it is,” Lup says. “Can you wait until we finish our argument? I’m just about to win.” 

“What? No, you’re not,” Kravitz insists. 

Barry eyes the zombies nervously as they circle. The army of corpses are in various states of decomposition, ranging from mostly skeletal to only slightly rotted flesh, and they look _hungry._ Well, the ones with faces do. 

Lup dispels her scythe to gesticulate at Kravitz. Kravitz leans in over his own to emphasise a point. Barry grimaces. Looks like this’ll have to be a Bluejeans special. 

The zombies charge. 

He swings his scythe, cutting through half a dozen of them in a single slash. A necrotic ball of energy appears in his off-hand, and he hurls it indiscriminately into the horde. It burns through a number of skeletons before it fizzles out. He’s feeling pretty good about himself, until the corpses of the ones he’s already killed start to jitter. The viscera bounces along the floor and pulls itself back together. The flesh binds, the bones knit, and the zombies start to stand again. He scowls at the elven lady. “No fair.” 

She shrugs apologetically. 

He takes an experimental swipe at one zombie’s head, slicing clean through the brain. Instead of falling, though, the zombie blinks in confusion and bends down to start patting the floor for his scalp, like Velma looking for her glasses. 

Barry looks over his shoulder at his partners. As he watches, Lup winds an imaginary jack-in-the-box and her middle finger pops out, some prestidigitated sparks and a puff of smoke shooting from the tip. Kravitz throws his hands in the air with an exasperated sigh as the smoke forms letters that spell out “fuck you!” 

Barry swings his scythe once more, slashing through another wave of zombies, and steps forward into the space he’s created. A thunderwave buys him some room, and another slash with his blade moves him another few feet closer to the necromancer. Then, the horde shifts, and he finds himself at the foot of the tombstone she’s perched upon. “Hey,” she says, smiling down at him. 

The zombies charge again, and he doesn’t have time to formulate a suitably witty reply as he fights for his un-life. The necromancer swings her feet and hums a little tune to herself as she watches. Barry ducks, weaves, slashes, casts, and generally is a badass, but eventually, the weight of the horde is simply too much. The scythe is ripped from his hands, and before he can re-summon it, the zombies are upon him, teeth snapping, nails raking his flesh, fists pummelling him - 

And then, a wave of heat rolls across him, the zombies incinerated, and Lup’s there, like an angel sent from heaven. “About time,” he wheezes. 

She shrugs at him, unrepentant, offering him a hand to help him up. “I had to win the argument.” 

“You didn’t win!” Kravitz calls, from the path, where he’s stood, pouting, his arms folded stubbornly. 

“Oh, hell no,” Lup says. “Hold the line, babe, I gotta go deal with this.” 

And she storms off again. 

Barry turns back to face the horde once more. He sighs, resigned, and summons his scythe as they charge again. 

Kravitz jitters, and Lup and Barry look at each other. “Uh oh,” Barry says, as their boss starts to float into the air, still horizontal. His body seizes, limbs jerking unnaturally, and his head snaps round to glare at them with glowing red eyes. His mouth falls open and he starts to chant in a language neither of them can comprehend, in a voice that is decidedly not his own. His entire body begins to glow with an ominous red light, which quickly starts to reach a blinding brightness - 

Lup steps forward and cracks him square in the forehead with the butt of her staff, hard. 

Kravitz drops like a bag of rocks, hitting the floor hard, all the air knocked out of him with an _oof_. He blinks, lies perfectly still for a moment, before he groans pitifully. “Owww, fuck.” 

“Come on, Krav. You always tell us not to step in demonic circles.” 

“Barry told me it was harmless!” 

“Well - hold on. That’s not entirely my fault. I said _mostly harmless,”_ Barry says. “Do you think that demon was normally cockney? Or was he using Kravitz’s work accent, for whatever reason -” 

Kravitz gawps. “That’s _mostly harmless?_ Barry, I was possessed by a demon!” 

“Yeah, but clearly not a very good demon. I mean, c’mon. Lup smacked him once and he fell out of your body.” 

“Felt like a good demon,” Kravitz mutters. “You weren’t the one who had to listen to him monologuing inside your head -” 

“Hey!” A nasally voice calls. “You fucked up our demon!” 

The reapers look up to see yet another group of cultists on the far side of the room. 

“Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with you?” Lup demands, furiously. “Kravitz, we have to add crimes against fashion to the list of charges. What’s up with all these necromancers and black? Was there a sale on? Two for one on plain black robes? Did you go to the monk store? If you pull back those robes, am I gonna find you’ve all got the tops of your heads shaved?” 

The lead cultist shuffles his feet and mutters something. 

“Speak up!” Lup calls. 

“It was more, like, a combo deal. You buy a Dread Summoner mask and a robe and you get the Evil Warlock’s Staff included -” 

“Where did you get them?” Kravitz asks. 

“Right!” Lup says. “We can go buy out the rest of their stock so these necromancers are forced to innovate a little bit, stop living the 1600s Benedictine life -” 

“No, Lup, so we can shut the shop down -” 

“Even better! Krav, you’re a genius -” 

“ _For selling necromantic items.”_

Lup blinks and pauses for just a moment. “For selling necromantic items, yeah.” As soon as Kravitz turns away, she turns to Barry and hisses, _“just distract Krav long enough for me to burn their stock of robes.”_

The vast grave burrow splits open, a chasm splitting the earth down the centre. A cloud of dust spurts from the top, obscuring the vision for a brief moment. An earth-shattering roar, bone-chilling, primordial, rends the air, and an enormous, draconic skull parts the cloud of dust, followed rapidly by the rest of the skeletal dragon’s body. Each step rocks the ground under their feet, and the dragon cocks back its head and blows a spout of fire, before fixing its empty eye sockets on the three of them. 

“Aw, beans,” Barry says. 

Lup half-heartedly casts a fireball. It harmlessly washes over the dragon’s bones, and it looks at her as if to say, _what the fuck, man?_

“Aw, beans,” Lup agrees. 

The dragon reaches out with one talon, six inches high and four in diameter, and flicks Kravitz before anyone can react. He’s launched backwards at Mach speeds, and only a conveniently-placed tree prevents him from disappearing over the horizon with the force of the blow. “Aw, beans,” he wheezes, barely audibly, and slumps over. 

A man, presumably a necromancer, appears from out of the forest, wielding a staff. The dragon turns to him, lowering its snout, and he pets it. “Avast, reapers! You foul entities have fallen into my devious trap -” 

“Can I just say how nice it is to finally meet someone with some fashion sense?” Barry interrupts. 

The necromancer looks like he’s straight out of the nineties. He’s wearing sky-blue jeans, wide around the knees and ankles (which Taako would call a travesty, but Barry would call _straight jeans._ Lup’d call ‘em sexy, if Barry were wearing them) and a navy-blue jjacket (jean jacket). His shirt isn’t, sadly, denim, but it does have a Backstreet Boys logo emblazoned on the front. He’s wearing a baseball cap backwards.

“What happened to you?” Lup asks, fascinated. “You look like you were within the blast radius of a bombing at a Levi’s. Have you been in a coma since the ‘90s? Did you just get resurrected like this dragon, but all the denim kept you preserved?” 

He scowls at them. “If you must know, the spooky robe store burned down. All the necromancers are panicking, no one knows what to do. Something about some psychopath with a vendetta against fashion. This was my Halloween costume. It was all I could get on short notice.” 

“Oh,” Lup says. “I brought this on myself, didn’t I?” 

Barry cackles. “I welcome our denim overlords. Jecromancers, if you will.” 

“ _Anyway,”_ the guy says. “I have a whole monologue written, here, so can you let me finish, please?” He pulls a scroll from his pocket. “Uh, _avast_ _reapers,_ blah blah blah... prepare to meet your doom, agents of the evil queen, for I, Bartholomus the warlock, do proclaim your... doom? I said that already, didn’t I?” 

“Demise?” Lup suggests. 

He points at her with an enormous grin. “Demise! Thank you, thank you.” He pulls a pen from behind his ear and scribbles on the scroll, before looking back up again and striking a pose. “Do proclaim your demise!” 

“How long does this go?” 

“Oh, uh, a little while. I’ve got a musical number, if you want to hear that? Although, actually, I’ve written some lines for you, too, mostly about how you’re, uh, trembling in your boots, that kind of thing. Do you think you’ll need to memorise those? Uh, I thought there’d only be one of you, so you can maybe split the lines up between you?” 

Lup nods. “Sure, I’ll take a look. Thanks, Bartholomus. Can I call you Bart? Gotta say, I thought my doom – sorry, my _demise –_ would come at the hands of someone less... theatrically inclined.” 

“Well, I always wanted to be a bard, but you gotta pay the bills somehow!” He chirps. “My mum, she always said, _Barty_ , she said, _you’ve_ _gotta_ _find a real job! Bardin’_ _ain’t_ _goin_ _’ nowhere, it’s a dying profession!”_

His mum, apparently, had a very high-pitched, thick Fantasy Boston accent, which Barty relays with relish. 

“Uh, not to nitpick, Bart, but have you rhymed _necromancy_ here with _pee my pants-y?”_ Barry says, rifling through the thick script the guy had handed over. 

“Well, uh, fantasy RhymeZone dot com only has so many options. It’s a long word, lots of syllables, hard to fit in there. Have you got any suggestions? I wanted to convey how I’m utterly terrifying.” 

“How about, uh, something something fancy? _He’s so good at_ _nec-ro-mancy_ _, and he looks so_ _godsdamn_ _fancy._ How about that?” 

“Huh, yeah, yeah, that could work, that could work,” Bart says, his lips moving as he counts out the syllables on his fingers. “Okay, hold on, hold this.” He thrusts his staff at Lup, and snatches the manuscript back off Barry, grabbing up his pen again. “’ _...and he looks... so_ _godsdamn_ _fancy.’_ Yep. Okay, perfect. Thank you, guys, really. Do you think you’re ready for it? I’ve got a boombox around here, somewhere – Okay, uh, Barry, your name was? Could you lay down a sick beat for me? You look like a beatboxing kinda guy.” 

“Me?” Barry asks, utterly baffled. “I look like a beatboxing kinda guy?” 

As this exchange happens, Kravitz stumbles back out of the woods. He looks pretty rough, his suit torn and battered. He’d lost his hat in the attack, and the tie has been torn off, leaving only the collar and the knot. His shirt is untucked, and his suit pants are so torn they look like ripped jeans. 

“Krav, can we keep him?” Lup asks. “Please? He’s so funny.” To one side, Barry is laying down the sickest beat he can wrangle. It's not great, unsurprisingly. Bart doesn’t seem to care, literally singing his own praises along with a clearly well-practiced dance routine. 

“Keep - _keep him?”_ Kravitz asks, his voice at least an octave higher than usual. 

“You got to keep Taako,” she pouts, crossing her arms. “Bet if I ask goth mama she’ll say yes.” 

“He - he – Taako – _goth mama?”_ Somewhere between the physical trauma of a dragon attack and the mental trauma of hearing his goddess referred to as _goth mama,_ Kravitz has lost the ability to speak. 

“Look, he’s a shitty necromancer anyway. He gave me his staff. Pretty sure that’s _my_ bone dragon, now. He can be our mascot. Krav, he always wanted to be a bard. You’re kindred spirits! You wanna be a conductor, he wants to, uh, write plays about killing reapers, I guess?” Without waiting for a reply, she turns back to Bart. “Hey, Bart! Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt, but, uh, did you use this staff to summon the dragon?” 

Bart stops the rap segment of his musical number to turn back to her, but he doesn’t stop dancing. Barry gives Lup a grateful look as he stops his pitiful attempts at beatboxing. “Yep! That’s the one. Cost me all I had. I’d been saving to go to Bard’s College, but you know, my mum, she insisted!” 

“Uh, so, Bart, I don’t want to be rude here, but did it occur to you that maybe I now control the dragon?” 

Bart’s jig slowly stops. “Huh. Uh. Hm. Well, uh. Hm.” 

“Krav, can we adopt him? Like a fantasy panda? I wanna put him through college,” Lup says, turning back to Kravitz, giving him her best puppy dog eyes. 

Kravitz blinks, slowly. “Are you... are you serious? Lup, he almost killed me.” 

“Everyone who’s anyone has, Krav, don’t be a jag. Bart, I’ll cut you a deal. I’m taking the staff, and the dope-ass dragon, but we’ll give you the money to go to Bard’s College. Wait, scratch that, we’ll enrol him in Taako’s school – Barry, call in that favour Ren owes you. Uh, Bart, your end of the deal is... you have to change your name.” She nods, decisively. 

“Change... my name?” 

“To Lup Jr,” she nods again. “Because I’m your mum now.” 

“Wait, hold on,” Barry interjects. “That makes me his dad, so I should get to help with the name choosing. Uh, Worldwide Webster.” 

“Fuck, Worldwide Webster is _very good._ I’m gonna ring Taako and enrol him -” 

Lup whips her stone out and is dialling before Bart can even respond. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. “Uh, I – I have a mum already -” Neither Lup nor Barry listens to him, so he turns, pleadingly, to Kravitz. “Are they really gonna make me change my name?” 

Kravitz can only shrug. 

The house is dark, ominous, foreboding. The yard is full of gravestones, the path long and winding. The door is a solid, heavy, black wood, and the knocker is shaped like a skull. 

Lup knocks. The sound seems to echo for miles. 

Taako opens the door and looks her up and down. “Fuck, you really dressed as me? Lulu, people are gonna see _‘me’_ making out with Barry and think – Lup. Lup, what did you do to my hat? Lup, that’s a good hat, and you’ve made a hole in it -” 

“That was Barry, dear,” Kravitz says. 

Barry turns to him with a betrayed look as Taako levels a piercing gaze his way. “Barold, were you shooting at my sister? Try and hit her next time, please, I’d rather mourn Lup than a hat -” 

Lup squawks and takes a swipe at Taako, who dodges backwards. “Come in, I guess. Krav, darling, keep an eye on these two idiots. Don’t let them upstairs, the rest of my hats are up there and I can’t lose another tonight.” 

The reapers step inside into Taako’s home. It’s extravagantly decked out – hand-carved pumpkins courtesy of Magnus line the halls, illusory cobwebs hang from the high ceilings, the only light flickering, valiantly fighting off the darkness of the room. The shadows seem to creep, hanging onto them as they move through the room. 

Then Taako steps through into the living room. 

Everyone from the Bureau is there. It’s packed, with a heavy party atmosphere – a table along one wall has every imaginable snack, all shaped like Halloweeny items. There are three colours of punch – red, black and orange. The electric lights that normally light the room have been illusioned to look like chandeliers, with candles of black wax. The large window through to Taako’s garden shows more gravestones set up out back, as well as the large English oak, its branches bare of leaves, casting ominous shadows in the moonlight. The Fantasy Ghostbusters theme plays from hidden speakers. 

Angus, dressed in a deerstalker and a tweed coat and armed with a bubble pipe and magnifying glass, waves from the far side of the room. Lup waves back with a grin. Lucretia, in a white flapper dress, gives Barry a small smile. He waves back. 

As everyone watches, Mookie runs face-first into the table, sending the punchbowl flying. Mavis desperately tries to catch it, but instead it simply soaks her through, dripping onto the carpet, her mouth dropping open in a horrified O. Merle, shamelessly reusing the same Ursula costume from the carnival on the moon, tries to sidle away before anyone notices the chaos. 

Taako scowls. “I’m gonna go clean that up. Krav, I was totally serious, do not let these two out of your sight, I don’t trust them an inch.” 

“Has he baked a cake yet, Skeletor? I’m gonna go make fix the batter, you _know_ he doesn’t add enough sugar -” Lup grins as her brother cuts his way through the crowd. 

“Lup, if I let you do that he’d divorce me,” Kravitz deadpans. 

She scowls and folds her arm, but Barry hears a Sending in his head. _“Distract him, Bear, I’ve got a cake to salvage.”_

He tries to disguise his grin as she bats his drink out of his hand, spilling it down Kravitz. “Barry!” Kravitz gasps, his mouth agape. 

“Sorry, Krav, lemme grab you some paper towels -” They both dab at the spill as Lup cuts her way through the crowd toward the kitchen, and Barry grins. 

He loves Halloween. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and happy Halloween!! I really hope you liked this - if you did, maybe consider leaving a comment and a kudos? Alternatively, you can check out two little ficlets I wrote on my tumblr [here](https://sgrumby.tumblr.com/post/633496541207953408/were-running-low-on-time-here-with-blupjeans) and [here!](https://sgrumby.tumblr.com/post/633455875645915136/taako-is-scared-of-lucretia-now-just-thinking) Thank you <3


End file.
